But Rabbi Aaron Kotler, who holds perhaps the most vaunted position in Lakewood, is looking to grow solutions.

With more than 100,000 residents, two thirds of them Orthodox, Lakewood is now the fifth most populous municipality in New Jersey, trailing only Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and Elizabeth -- and it's still growing.

A year ago, Kotler became a founding member of Lakewood Neighbors, a multi-ethnic, interdenominational civic group formed by community leaders to address local challenges and tensions that have accompanied Lakewood's Orthodox growth spurt.

Demand for housing has sent real estate values and rents soaring, displacing some, while public spending on transportation and special education for the 30,000 Orthodox children who attend private religious schools has contributed to a perennial school budget deficit. Those situations, combined with the culturally distinct, insular nature of the Orthodox community, have also stirred ethnic tensions and acts of anti-Semitism.

So last month, the Lakewood Neighbors announced they had hired mediators from the Consensus Building Institute to employ a charrette process, or a series of meetings intended to learn the views of a broad cross-section of residents of Lakewood and the surrounding area. Once those participants are identified, the meetings will begin in January, before a report with recommendations is released in March, said Stacie Nicole Smith, a senior mediator with CBI.

"Our focus is not to cure anti-Semitism," said Smith, who has worked with Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. "What we’re trying to do is understand what are the challenges that people are facing in their everyday lives."

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Russ DeSantis | For NJ Advance Media

The rabbi is the grandson of Beth Medrash Govoha's founder and the current CEO of the prestigious yeshiva known by its initials as BMG.

Kotler's grandfather, Rabbi Ahoron Kotler, was a leader of the Lithuanian Orthodox Jewish community who escaped Europe and the Nazis in 1941, and founded the Lakewood yeshiva with a handful of students. There are now nearly 7,000, and BMG is sometimes referred to as the Harvard of Talmudic Scholarship, the study of the literature interpreting the Torah.

Kotler, who at 55 is a father of seven and a grandfather of nine, is also a member of the Lakewood vaad, or council of rabbis, and an influential political figure.

He welcomed NJ Advance Media into his book-lined home a few blocks from the BMG campus to talk about the upcoming process and some of the challenges it will address.

The why is so easy: they love it here! New Jersey is a great place to live, (even though) we may be the butt of jokes across the country. ... It’s affordable relative to New York or Philadelphia, it’s accessible, there are great jobs here, it’s an unbelievable jobs engine here. There are good schools, there are good neighbors.

And there are good people of all types here. It’s diverse, it’s energetic. It has all the advantages of the city without the disadvantages of the city.

Okay. But where are they coming from? Are they being priced out of Brooklyn?

A lot of the Orthodox families in Brooklyn were being priced out by Brooklyn gentrification. Brooklyn prices in some ways have exceeded Manhattan. And that made Brooklyn not affordable. And we’re going to see this effect again now, with Amazon coming into Long Island City. Queens, I’ve read, is going off the charts in terms of real estate.

So, New Jersey is an affordable alternative. Now, we in Jersey, we say it’s not affordable. But relative to those folks, they’re moving out of Flatbush (Brooklyn), or places like that, they’re buying a quarter-acre or a half-acre lot in Toms River with a nice big home. As long as they have schools, and community and jobs, they’re happy to do it.

Will the growth of the Orthodox population force out Lakewood's other ethnic communities?

So, the Hispanic population grew rapidly for a long time, as the Orthodox population grew. And I think that the Hispanic population, to significant degree, displaced the black population.

I think there's a lot more displacement of Orthodox taking place, numerically, than there is of Hispanic or black people.

Displacement of Orthodox?

Yeah, of the poor Orthodox. So just like there are many young black families or older black families that are being priced out, or Hispanic families, there are many Orthodox families that are being priced out, too.

If you asked me, what would be my dream? I would love to see a ton of affordable housing built here.

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Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media

What about environmentalists’ concerns that Lakewood's rapid development threatens the environmentally-sensitive Pinelands region?

Lakewood, in its smart growth plan, preserves four significantly large tracts of land in Lakewood itself for the first time, and that was done in the last Smart Growth plan and preserved in the master plan.

I personally would like to see Lakewood build more parks for active recreation — they’ve done a lot for passive recreation — I’d love to see a lot more of that.

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Russ DeSantis | For NJ Advance Media

Who are Lakewood Neighbors?

We're a group of good friends: Ray Coles, mayor of Lakewood; (New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority Commissioner) Joe Buckelew, who in many ways is the senior sage and the father of Lakewood. He was a waiter in the Laurel in the Pines Hotel in the 1940s, police officer in Lakewood, mayor of Lakewood back in the '70s, and has a really long and beautiful history here with a lot of relationships. Dr. Joe Marbach...the president of GCU, Georgian Court University; myself; and other individuals like that.

We’re all invested in the community and we all got together in the community and we got together and said, hey, let’s really try to do this. Let’s try to do something different for this area.

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What is the Vaad and how does it work?

We’re a group of citizens — some rabbis, but not all — and we try to listen carefully to everyone in Lakewood. We try to come out with recommendations when there’s an election. But also try to be active as a civic group. Sometimes people like what we say, sometimes they don’t. That’s okay.

We think that having an informed citizenry that’s engaged is a healthy thing.

When you say you listen, is it an informal kind of thing, or what?

A lot of formal and a lot of informality. There are a lot of community groups, we meet with community groups.

Outside the Orthodox community?

Absolutely. Ears to the ground.

Are there any non-Orthodox members of the Vaad?

No.

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Russ DeSantis | For NJ Advance Media

What is the charrette process used by the mediators?

The charrette concept is often used with contentious zoning issues or other types of changes like that. The charrette concept has been out there for a while, but we've never really seen it used here. I have a very dear friend named Ralph Zucker, who is the developer of the Bell Works project over in Holmdel. And he did amazing work with a charrette — a charrette is actually a series of meetings — to try to develop a common vision for that development.

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Russ DeSantis | NJ Advance Media.com

Is anti-Semitism a concern of yours?

I think anti-Semitism is a concern for any group of citizens.

I think most people are really good people. They want to live together, they want to live in harmony and peace. And they do live together in harmony and peace. And I think that characterizes, really, this region, whether it's Toms River, Jackson, Brick or Lakewood, whether as neighbors, as colleagues, people working together. And that’s certainly been my own personal experience.

But there's an element behind it that, as change happens, you have to work a little bit harder to pull people together.

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Do you agree with those who say President Donald Trump's rhetoric has contributed to the documented rise in hate crimes in this country, including anti-Semitic incidents, whether it’s the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre or less serious incidents in Lakewood and other parts of New Jersey?

I chose voluntarily to go on record and wrote an editorial, an op-ed, and I spoke pretty strongly on the climate in the country as a whole. And I tied it back not only to Pittsburgh, because Pittsburgh's not the first incident like that, there are many other incidents, and it's not just minorities who are affected where there is intolerance and what that means for this country.

The United States is the best country in the world, and probably the best there has ever been, for the way people get along, for the judicial system, for the political system that we have, and for the way we live, act and interact. But it’s not perfect. I think every generation needs to be exceptionally vigilant to protect our liberties, to protect our freedoms. That applies to everybody.

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Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media

You've said the most serious issue confronting Lakewood is school funding. Should Lakewood get a special aid appropriation every year, or does the state's school funding formula have to change?

I think that the formula was not designed with outlier, unique municipalities, like Lakewood and others. There are certain municipalities that have different characteristics, as Lakewood has, and I’m sure Deal...Edison, Teaneck, Englewood, Passaic, Clifton, Toms River have.

Every formula is like making sausage. It’s never fun watching it made, but it has to be done otherwise you’re not going to have something to eat. This formula in place was probably designed, in its core, probably 20 to 25 years ago, before there were municipalities with unique public school characteristics like we have today. It’s time for the legislature to take a look.

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Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Meda

And then it gets amplified in Lakewood because of its unique school population?

But it’s really not amplified because the citizens of Lakewood are all paying taxes, unlike the other 566 or so municipalities, who are paying taxes and they’re getting back on their taxes, not only busing and special ed, but they’re also getting a public school education. The citizens of Lakewood are paying the same or higher taxes and they’re only getting back the mandated busing, of which the state acknowledges that it only reimburses a small portion of the mandated busing.

And they give back some special ed dollars. We’re actually running what we call a big surplus in what we pay in versus what we get back. So, the bus issue really is a red herring.

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Ariste Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media

Do you think that’s a point that is missed by some of the folks who resent the situation?

I think people just see a problem, and problems rightfully frustrate people, so they’ll lash out.

One thing that was never taken into account is when you have a municipality with a large private school population, such as Lakewood. The way the state calculates how wealthy a district is and how much state aid to provide, it takes the wealth of that population and it divides it not by the population, but by the number of public school children in the population.

Statewide, it affects many, and it’s an unfairness — not deliberate by anybody — that is structured into the way the formula is written. And it’s time for the state to fix that, not for private school kids, but for the public school kids.

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Shimon Nussbaum of Lakewood, left, left federal court in Trenton in July 2017, after being charged wtih Medicaid fraud. (Christina Rojas | For NJ Advance Media)

Several members of the Orthodox community have made headlines in connection with Medicaid fraud. Do those kinds of headlines tar the entire community?

I think that there’s an inordinate amount of attention given.

So, I think there’s a fascination in the public, and therefore in the media, with the exotic, the mysterious, and the unknown. So I think it’s our job, whether the media or citizens, to help people understand that which is different.